Now is a pretty bad time to be shopping for a mechanical hard drive. Prices are generally higher than what they were a couple of months ago, sometimes significantly so, due to the flooding in Thailand. [......]
Archive for the ‘Security’ Category
Security firm Symantec this week announced the results of its November 2011 Intelligence Report, a monthly analysis on the state of security and trending cyber threats. The roller coaster report notes that the number of targeted attacks quadrupled since January (boo!), but the global spam rate in November is not only the lowest all year, but for the past three years as well (yay!). Symantec identified the public sector as the most frequently targeted industry during 2011, with about 20.5 targeted attacks blocked each day. [......]
If you're the type of person who has to have every Apple product that comes out and fancy yourself a gambling type, now might be a good time to put your iPad 2 up for sale on eBay or Craigslist. It will never be worth more than it is right now, it's still early enough to cash in on the holiday shoppers, and if you trust Citi analyst Richard Gardner, the iPad 3 will launch in February. Gardner stated in a research note to investors that he's hearing from "several sources" the next iPad will launch a month ahead of when iPad 2's one year anniversary, and there are "no significant hurdles remaining" that would prevent this from happening, Business Insider reports [......]
With all the hype around the Kindle Fire it’s easy to forget about the Nook Tablet . The other budget Android tablet is zipping along nicely according to industry watchdog Digitimes[......]
Amazon Prime Video just got a shot of show tunes in the arm as the retailer just announced an extended licensing agreement with Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution. Exact terms of the deal including the length of the agreement were not released. [......]
Japan-based Kowa Tmsuk may just be ten months old and just have five employees (it’s a joint venture between two larger companies), but it seems the company is set to build cool things. Their electric vehicle concept, dubbed KOBOT, looks very promising – especially for a first product. The KOBOT is essentially a mix between a robot and an electric mini car that can make itself smaller than it already is with the push of a button (a feature that obviously comes in handy when it’s time to park the vehicle, for example). [......]
Nokia this morning announced that it has started shipping its stylish, Windows Phone 7.5 Mango-powered smartphone Lumia 710 to customers in Taiwan (where it is sold alongside the Lumia 800). Over the next week, the phone will hit shelves across Singapore, Hong Kong, India and Russia – no other global roll-out details were announced for the time being. [......]
Lattice Semiconductor this morning announced that it is to acquire SiliconBlue Technologies , which develops mobile device solutions for the consumer handheld market. Lattice Semi will pay approximately $62 million in cash for SiliconBlue and aims to close the deal before the end of the year. [......]
It took them quite a while, but as reported , Panasonic is finally ready to re-enter the global market for cell phones. After 2005, Big P has been selling handsets almost exclusively in Japan. The company today announced [JP] it will start expanding its mobile business to Europe in March 2012, starting with a yet to be named Android device[......]
Get your tinfoil hats on, folks. In the documentation released earlier this week by Microsoft on its upcoming Windows 8 Store, the software giant said that apps purchased from the App Store will come with a “ kill switch .” Redmond can use this to disable or remove the app from Windows 8 machines. Even if its intentions are good, users are likely to be suspicious of Microsoft on this one[......]
I’ve recently fallen into the habit of pulling and tugging at ATM slots before I slide my card through because I fear that someone nefarious has stuck one of these 3D-printed card skimmers over the opening. This skimmer, found in California, was 3D-printed to resemble the real Chase ATM slot almost perfectly. Wildly enough, there’s a pinhole camera connected to a full PCB hidden under the plate and the ports designed to assist the visually impaired seem to be unimpeded, which means nothing would seem amiss even as this thing grabbed your card account number, PIN, and, presumably, the security code on the back of your card in some cases[......]
It's a battle of the Congressional antipiracy acronyms. In one corner are SOPA and PROTECT IP, the House and Senate bills that would bring site blocking, search engine de-listing, and more to the US in an effort to stop "rogue" sites. In the other corner, today's challenger : the Online Protection & Enforcement of Digital Trade Act, called the "OPEN" Act (PDF). [......]
Crystal Cox An Oregon judge has ruled that a Montana blogger is not eligible for the legal protections afforded to journalists, letting stand a $2.5 million defamation verdict. The blogger, a Montana woman named Crystal Cox, had become a thorn in the side of an attorney named Kevin Padrick. Padrick is the principal of a firm named Obsidian Finance Group[......]
There are enough bad drivers on the road as it is, do we really need the added distraction of texting while behind the wheel? We're not crazy about either one, and when you combine the two, it makes us want to stay off the road altogether. [......]
Adobe has reported a new "critical vulnerability" for current and older versions of Adobe Reader and Acrobat for Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix operating systems. The attack has already been exploited by hackers in targeted attacks against the Adobe 9 reader on Windows, the company stated in its security advisory The hack appears to have already been used in an attack on US defense contractors and research facilities. Discovered by Lockheed Martin's Computer Incident Response Team and MITRE , the vulnerability could allow an attacker to send a malicious Adobe document file that crashes Reader, and "potentiallty allow an attacker to take control of the affected system," according to the Adobe Product Security Incident Response Team's alert[......]
